Religion makes you dumb and blind to reality. Take for example Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters. He’s been in the news several times for his attempts to shove religion down everyone’s throat. He wanted teachers to take a patriotic oath, which is a crypto-fascist tool used by dictators to have complete control over their populous. His speaks in the familiar tone of fundamentalists of any faith:
“We will bring God and prayer back in schools in Oklahoma, and fight back against the radical myth of separation of church and state.”
This is the dream and vision of Ryan Walters, who believes that the idea that Congress disallowing the establishment of a particular religion is a myth. Never mind the fact that it’s spelled fairly clearly in America’s founding document, or in Jefferson’s letters, further clarification of the concept. No, so long as Ryan believes in the superiority of his beliefs, such inconvenient truths will be ignored.
It’s typical that these types of clowns fail to realize that the entire reason for the clause was to allow the proliferation of all religious ideas. Christianity has over 30,000 denominations (thanks largely to that establishment clause we talked about), and many are extremely different from one another. I very much doubt that a Baptist would be happy with the dogma of 7 Day Adventist, and vise versa. The only way people can ensure that their religious rights are respected is if everyone has a level playing field.
The Catholic church is a sneaky organization. It functions in the shadows, using the justice system as its cudgel in order to gain ground in their effort to regain dominance over society and our lives. It is all very gradual. For instance, when the government began to fund more playgrounds in schools, they went all the way to the Supreme Court (a known friend of religion these days) and pursued a judgement which declared that they too could receive funds, since playgrounds are not educational material.
Now their move is more overt. In Oklahoma, the effort to fund chartered religious schools have been realized, and now tax dollars are being used to fund these indoctrination centers. Its a clear violation of their constitution, but this didn’t stop their government from approving of such nonsense. Now, the population is equally divided over the issue, which is not usually the case.
To be clear, the debate isn’t whether or not believers can set up their own schools. The government still allows parents to deny a proper education in favor of homeschooling, and plenty of private religious “educational” institutions litter the country. Worse still, these Catholic tricksters even get the government to pay their tuition for students who don’t have access of public schools. No, this is specifically the fact that taxpayers, already inadvertently paying for religious organizations by their refusal to pay taxes, are now forced to shell out money to ensure that an insecure and controlling religion can be forced upon people.
With the Supreme Court stacked the way it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if any pending lawsuits this results on a state level will undoubtedly lead to more favorable decisions by a justice system now completely tainted by religion. It’s ironic that, in a world where there are fewer religious people than ever in the population, they have more power than ever. Our indifference to their actions has cost us dearly, and will continue to do so.
f you weren’t already sick of the race to the White House, you’re going to hate the next 4 years of your life, as the media can’t help but trip over themselves trying to predict the possible candidates for 2016. One prospect for Republicans is a Hispanic Florida Senator by the name of Marco Rubio. He’s made the new recently for saying some profoundly dumb shit:
I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.
It’s a great mystery how in the age of science someone could still be so profoundly ignorant about the age of the Earth. Maybe a few decades ago, before everyone had the Library of Alexandria in their fucking pocket, it would have been understandable not to know. Hell, we’ve only really known about the age of the universe for a few generations, and it can take time for something to really be known. But by now, not knowing is really an active choice one has to make. That ignorance must be embraced, since I doubt Rubio has never been confronted with the factual age of the Cosmos at some point in his life.
Sure, there are multiple ‘theories’ of how old the earth is, but only one of them is actually a scientific theory and not the dumb invention of ignorant sheep herders (keep in mind both definitions are entirely different as well). As for whether or not economies depend on knowing the age of the Earth, I would argue that a man who sits on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee should know by now you can’t actually have an economy without science, or its baby sister, technology. Knowing how old the Earth is should be a requirement if you’re on a committee with the fucking word ‘science’ in it, don’t you think?
Either two things are at play here: either Rubio is trying to a appeal to his science hating base, or he’s a fucking moron. And while all of this science denial is a part of the modern electoral strategy one has to employ, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rubio didn’t actually believe the evidence that the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old. That’s because this concept alone is terrifying to the provincialism of religious myths. How insignificant are humans if we represent but a blip in the history of Earth and the Cosmos, and what does it say about their unimpressive dead Jew?
Now that the election is over and President Obama no longer has to be afraid of Evangelicals bent on his destruction, it’s time to put aside petty politics and enforce the law in regards to religious institutions and their supposed neutrality when it comes to politics.
We all know countless religious organizations have been violating the rules of their tax-exempt status, which stipulates pastors are not allowed to specifically endorse a political candidate. The logic behind this rule is simple: religions hold a lot of sway and power, and the last thing you want is for that power to be used to dictate who their followers should vote for. It makes an implicit statement about the role of church in politics: kindly stay the fuck out of it, or we’ll take away your privileges.
Unfortunately, the IRS has gone out of its way to ignore any attempts to challenge it, even when over 1500 pastors openly defied them in the hopes they could then turn around and take this issue to the courts (and ultimately end up costing everyone a lot of money to determine they don’t have a legal leg to stand on). If you thought there might be some kind of reasonable explanation from the IRS as to why they’ve so consistently failed to uphold the law, you’ll be shocked by how much they are tripping over one another trying to get their bullshit story straight:
“We are holding any potential church audits in abeyance,” IRS official Russell Renwicks said.
The IRS later disavowed the statement, insisting the agency intended to investigate the many complaints it had received once it revised its regulations.
“The IRS continues to run a balanced program that follows up on potential non-compliance, while ensuring the appropriate oversight and review to determine that compliance activities are necessary and appropriate,” IRS spokesman Dean Patterson clarified.
Talk about backtracking; in the past three years, there hasn’t been one single investigation, despite the fact thousands of pastors continually violated this law like it was Jodie Foster in The Accused.
Dissatisfied by the lack of balls in the organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the IRS for its failure to comply with their own law. If you think this is a worthy cause and want to support them (hint: I think we all should), then go to their site and make a donation. Let’s hit these religious fuckers where it hurts the most: the pocketbook!
As election day approaches, religious institutions are taking advantage of the uncertainty and religious resurgence to attempt to undo a law prohibiting them from participating in the political process. Now, we all know the IRS is a toothless organization when it comes to this issue: only once have they ever bothered to enforce this law, despite blatant violations (such as when the Mormon Church spent 30 million dollars trying to ban gay marriage).
Confident in the current political climate that no administration would dare take them on, a group of roughly 1000 pastors and religious leaders are gathering to endorse Mitt Romney (which isn’t stated but using my amazing detective skills, I decoded their intent).
The Conservative group “Alliance Defending Freedom” has scheduled what they are calling “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” for October 7th, when church leaders across America will devote their sermons to the election and campaign on behalf of a political candidate.
Nice try attempting to make this whole affair seem bipartisan. With Obama playing extra nice to religious groups not to appear anti-religious, you have to wonder if there is anyone with enough guts and interest in maintaining their Republic who will take these guys on. This shit is so blatant, they’re even planning on baiting the IRS with videos of themselves violating this law. Their hope is this will cause a political quagmire that can be exploited by conservative media and allow them even more power in the political process. Parker Louis can’t lose.
“According to our Forefathers, God is the platform”
Yeah, so much so that they wrote an amendment specifically mentioning the fact that the government was not in the business of endorsing any religion, or forcing someone to pass a religious test to enter office. It was also the first fucking thing they wrote, but I’m sure a failed TV actor has a much better understanding of how they felt than historians, or the Founding Fathers themselves. So when James Madison said
“Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects”.
What he really meant to say was:
” Jesus is Lord, and can we please put him on the ballot or something”.
Man, making up facts is fun! I don’t even need to put references to my material, since that’s just east-coast elitist claptrap.
You’re right about one thing, Kirk. The Founding Fathers would be appalled, just not for the reasons you think.
It doesn’t matter how loud you scream in your opposition to religion being intertwined with politics. The decision has already been made. For those of you who thought perhaps the Democratic party had finally woken up to the idea that us ‘nones’ are an important enough minority that our desire to have a true separation of church and state would influence their policy. We were tantalized with the possibility of a political platform that made no unnecessary mention of God, but this was all a smoke screen. Democrats had already shown their spinelessness by including a passage about the important of faith, and reaffirmed their commitment to fund, with taxpayer money, the spread of all that fucking nonsense.
This, I could have stomached. It was already an unbearable intrusion, but I understood where it came from: Democrats are always pushed to religious extremes when conservatives shake their tree a little by claiming they’re a bunch of godless commies hell bent on destroying America. So in an effort to try and double down on crazy, they caved and decided the best way to lead a nation is to look like weak, spineless cowards.
The decision to include God or Israel in their platform was put to a false vote in an effort to pretend the majority of attendees agreed with the motion. The prompter was already telling you what the verdict was, but their inability to convincingly pass this shit through only goes to demonstrate the fact that us ‘nones’ have no real political party. It clarifies the fact it matters little how much we bother to scream and shout our discontent: we will be ignored. The decision to include religion in government (and sending a big gigantic finger to Palestine) had already been made, and fuck anyone who disagreed. Anyone hoping Obama had nothing to do with it would be disappointed to know the request was apparently his. So much for being on our side.
That’s what I find so terrifying about America. Making progress is impossible when it’s so easy to be dragged down into the mud. You can’t even honor the very first amendment in your own constitution, for pasta’s sake!
It wasn’t always like this. Back in the day, Presidents like James Garfield were gutsy enough to say the separation of church and state should be absolute. He even called on churches to be taxed. This obviously popular idea might perhaps explain why he was assassinated after less than a year in office, shot by – you guessed it – a crazy preacher.
So what do we do? We’re obviously powerless to stop it in our current form, and the system has shown itself as essentially corrupt. How can we hope to make change if this is true?
I believe the problem has to the systematic dismantling of religion from all OTHER aspects of our lives before we can hope to get it out of politics. That system is old, controlled by old people, who frankly don’t have the interest of future generations in mind. They are slow to act, and quick to condemn. Religion has infiltrated itself in government in almost every form (in the military, in office, and in the Supreme Court), and expunging it now seems almost impossible. With so much financially at stake (faith based organizations get more than simply tax cuts) you can bet that money will go a long way to protect their own interests. Is there a solution to this madness? Will we ever be able to make headway against this entrenched enemy?
So what do you do if your country is slowly accepting marriage equality, passing health care laws that disallow insurance companies from denying coverage, and even threatening to tax the rich? Why, you segregate yourself from society and form your own theocracy, that’s what!
In case you actually give a shit who this guy is, and why he has such a hideous/hypnotic beard, you should stop by his website, ChristianExodus.org. It’s a site dedicated to whackos seeking to retreat from a society they see as increasingly permissive and sinful. They’re pretty unhappy about the fact the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of The Affordable Health Care Act (colloquially known as ‘Obama Care’), and they’ve decided to secede from a democratic republic and want to form some ill-defined theocratic kingdom.
The initial goal was to move thousands of Christian constitutionalists to South Carolina to accelerate the return to self-government based upon Christian principles at the local and State level. This project continues to this day, with the ultimate goal of forming an independent Christian nation that will survive after the decline and fall of the financially and morally bankrupt American empire.
If this sounds mildly familiar, it’s because every single scary cult in history has tried to do the same thing (I think some of these psychos called themselves Puritans at one point). These particular psychos dislike government, contraception and women who talk back:
The desire that the Woman has for the Man is to usurp his God-given authority. In a similar way
that women seek to supplant male authority, sin seeks to seduce the hearts of men.
Wow ladies, sounds like a swell bunch of guys, eh? If you don’t think that’s enticing enough, you should watch the whole video of ‘goat-man’ and the plans he has for your uterus…
First off, never trust a man who gives you a false name. His name is not Joe, he has never been a plumber, and because he said things stupid conservative people like, he’s been allowed to keep this ludicrous moniker. Like any quasi-celebrity looking for attention, he believes his limited understanding of everything gives him a shot at winning an election. What’s his platform? That the Bible is good because it’s never been changed, or that science is bad because it does!
Oh religious people: you can never be sure if they love religion or secretly despise it. Why else would they resort to calling our free-thought movement “a religion” if not to criticize it? Obviously they recognize the fact that by definition, a religion is a creepy organization intent on pushing through their wacky agenda. While I agree this is a definite aspect of all religion, conflating our lack of belief with their dogma is both insulting and totally untrue. If atheism is a religion, than bald is a hair style.
“I think there is in this country a war on religion,” Romney replied. “I think there is a desire to establish a religion in America known as secularism…an attack on one religion is an attack on all religion.”
Framing it this way makes sense for Romney: he needs a bunch of denominations that have hated each other for centuries to band together and help him fight the evils of scientific materialism. What is hilarious to note is the government is already in the business of establishing religion, albeit unofficially. Tax exemption, government funded abstinence programs, and religious organizations receiving government monies for their programs amounts to the same thing. For us “secularists” to compete, we would need to receive millions of dollars in subsidies, never pay any taxes, and have government sponsored student assemblies “preaching” common sense and rationalism. As you can probably guess, it’ll be a cold day in Hell when we get this kind of assistance. Hey, we’re the underdogs in this fight, but it won’t stop these fuckos from trying to paint us as the bad guys.
In a continued effort to try and still be relevant, Newt Gingrich recently spoke to a modestly sized crowd in Cumming, Georgia assuring them of his (false) piety, and warning his dwindling support base that it was time for evangelicals to “defend themselves”:
“The other side will fight back and they will fight back on two fronts. You will have radical Islamists who want to kill us and you will have secularists who want to coerce us, and that’s why, for example, recently you saw the Obama administration trying to coerce the Catholic Church because it is the inevitable nature of the left to use government to impose on us their values,” said Gingrich.
Imposing values is uniquely left, you say? I suppose if we ignore governmental legislation trying to ban abortion, draconian anti-immigration laws that treat Hispanics as second class citizens, or the myriad of ways that religious douchebags use the government to impose their own values, then yes, you could claim that with a straight face.
As for this paranoid assumption that secularists “coerce” people, what he really means is that we’ll effectively change people’s minds and make them abandon their foolhardy beliefs. I do love, however, how we’re on the opposite spectrum of Islamic fundamentalism. I take that with a badge of pride.
There aren’t a lot of opportunities to be proud of your government these days. As a beleaguered young(ish) male anxious to blame others for his failures, I see every incompetent bureaucratic farce (of which there really are too many to name) and forget that occasionally, they get something right. In this case, it was refusing the appeal of two unnamed parents who wanted their children pulled from a religious diversity class. Claiming that the education of their young ones would crumble their fragile belief structure (they called it “protecting their religious freedom”, a common tactic of today’s fundamentalists), the Catholic parents managed to make it all the way to the Quebec Supreme Court before someone finally called them on their shit: religious freedom has nothing to do with isolating people from other world views. Period.
With everyone’s heads screwed back on, these kids have a chance of actually learning something that isn’t founded on principles set out by a bunch of weird dudes dressed in overly elaborate robes. Who knows, maybe these kids have a chance in a province where 68% of the population believes in Evolution (compared to the national average of 59%).
Remember how American elections are never about issues that are actually relevant to the health of the nation in general? Even while your economy continues to tank, politicians seem totally unconcerned that The Federal Reserve gave American banks over 7 trillion dollars with a negligible interest rate, or that the protracted War in Afghanistan and Iraq has cost them another 1.29 trillion. No, the most important thing for moronic politicians like Michele Bachmann is Congress deciding to remove an outdated military Code of Conduct that forbids uniformed officers from sodomy (that’s non vaginal sex) and fucking animals.
So naturally, everyone without a brain is up at arms that this repeal would suddenly send a message to kids that it’s ok to bang Fido. Here’s Michele’s brilliant argument as to why this issue is so important, and not at all a complete fucking distraction from shit that actually matters:
It’s absolutely abhorrent, reprehensible and you think, this is the kind of thing parents try to keep from their children because parents want to have their children enjoy innocence. Children need that latency period, they need innocence and your own government legalizes this? … Are we really going to say ho hum and laugh and go back to sleep?
I don’t think this woman knows how laws are passed. Repealing an outdated and clearly bigoted code of conduct isn’t the same as drafting legislation to make something legal. That’s alright, though: she’s only running for the highest office in the land! She doesn’t really need to learn any of this legal mumbo-jumbo, does she? Wait, what’s her current job?
Is that so? It certainly doesn’t feel that way, especially when your government makes laws specifically designed NOT to allow gays and lesbians to marry. Well, to be fair, she claims they are allowed to get married: but it must be to someone of the opposite sex. See, we’re all equal! We all get to conform to what Christian nutjobs like Michele wants us to be.
You can feel some sympathy for her though. I mean, she did marry a gay guy, so she must know what she’s talking about!
This week, Ryan and I discuss the deteriorating situation in Egypt, the recent shake-up at CFI Canada and what that experience taught me about activist organizations. Also, my obsession with old Spider-man cartoons.
